


The Hurting & The Healing

by berlitzschen



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Death, M/M, i'm just writing this to get angst feels out of my system, idk how morty does it, it's pretty fucked up, pls becareful guys, some fucked up shit
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 09:17:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11643525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/berlitzschen/pseuds/berlitzschen
Summary: Rick dies.This is Morty's life after.





	1. The Breathing

Chapter 1

The Breathing

 

_ You’re made of hands and dreams _

_ You’re my demands and wreaths  _

 

Some things never change. Not the ineffable way gravity tethered lives to planets, not the motion of stars orbiting their black holes, and certainly not the way Rick loved Morty. 

It happened when Morty was twenty-eight and Rick was seventy-four. 

Rick woke up, completely sober, a secret spilling from his bones. He turned to his bedmate and wrapped an arm around his form, both of them clothed in only their underwear under the thin sheets. He buried his face in the mess of curls. Concentrating only on the faint scent of shampoo and the way the hair tickled his nose, Rick let out a trembling breath. He pulled the boy —not a boy anymore, but he would always be a boy to Rick—tight against his chest and swore silently as the tears slipped down his cheeks.

Pressing his face against the back of his grandson’s neck, Rick layered wet, open-mouthed kisses all along the smooth skin. Swallowing against the burning and constriction in his throat, Rick memorized the gentle rising and falling of Morty’s chest. It seemed to him their hearts beating in tandem was the only sound that dare disturb the stillness of the planet. The gentle putter of the fan, the rustling of leaves outside—Rick could no longer hear any of them.

Fumbling in the darkness, he found Morty’s hand and interlaced their fingers. He squeezed them tight, chasing away the numbness in his fingers, if only for these few moments.

A little noise pulled from Morty’s mouth. 

“Rick?” Morty’s voice was rough from sleep but still soothing against Rick’s fading nerves. 

Rick hummed in question, not yet trusting his voice. 

“Is something wrong?” Morty asked. “Did you have a nightmare?”

Rick smiled. Warmth and fondness bloomed in his chest, one of the only sensations he could still recognize. Morty was always so concerned about him. It made him ache.

“No, Morty. Everything’s fine,” a pause, “I love you, Morty.” His voice broke.

Morty nuzzled into his pillowing, slightly muffling his drowsy response, “I love you, too, Rick.” Morty fell back asleep.

When Rick no longer felt Morty’s hand in his own, despite knowing neither of them had pulled away, he closed his eyes and gave his grandson his last kiss.


	2. The Smoldering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morty begins arrangements.

Chapter 2

 

_ I’ll splice a fire into your bones _

_ I’ll build an empire from your homes _

 

Morty knew when he woke up before Rick, the older man coiled around him, exactly what happened. He slipped out of his grandfather’s embrace, almost flinching when his arms dangled unresponsively over the edge of the bed. Brushing back the blue hair that had only gotten thinner and grayer in the last few years, Morty’s heart clenched the strongest when he saw the blissful smile still holding his grandfather’s lips. He swallowed the lump in his throat and padded out of the room.

Using one of Rick’s space phones, he contacted Squanchy. The thought that he should be contacting his family first never even crossed Morty’s mind. The family had vanished from his realm of concerns years ago. He couldn’t even concretely remember the last thought he had about them. 

As far as Rick and Morty were concerned, they were the only family they had. And now, Morty was alone. 

Squanchy picked up and greeted Morty as usual. 

When he was met with Morty’s long silence, Squanchy knew.

“So, it’s happened, huh?” Squanchy slumped to the floor.

“Yeah.” Morty stared out the window. Dawn was coming. Rick would’ve like to see it. He always appreciated sunrises. Sometimes, when the summer night wasn’t too hot, they would sleep out in the hammock. Rick always woke before Morty, especially since he stopped drinking so much. He’d always let Morty sleep in until the sun crept over the horizon and was in its full splendor. Nuzzling and kissing Morty awake, they’d lay there, Morty tucked into Rick’s chest, listening to the soft flutter of their hearts as the sun warmed their faces. 

Morty would never watch another sunrise with Rick again. He sunk down on the patio, his back turned to the eastern sky. His imperfect silhouette stretched across the deck and a cold breeze brought goosebumps along every inch of his skin. 

“I’ll take care of it, Morty,” Squanchy tried.

“No. No,” he sniffled, “I’ll do it. I can do it.” He picked at the peeling paint Rick applied six years ago. They’d neglected to refinish it last summer. Now Morty wouldn’t need to bother with it. 

Squanchy relented, “did he tell you what he wanted?”

Morty laughed, remembering the time Rick had told him what he wanted be done with his body  . . .  _ when  _ he perished, but it was strangled by the sobs tearing from his throat. “Yeah. He told me what he wants. He wants us—to take his-his-his a-ashes t-to uh,” he sucked in a breath, “that same mountain where—”

“I know where,” Squanchy paused, “I can be there in two days. Should I . . . should I come to you first?”

Morty shook his head. “No. I-I can do it. I-I-I’ll bring him,” he didn’t know why he bothered wiping the tears from his eyes. More just fell in their place. “H-H-H-H-He would want one more r-ride in the ship.”

Squanchy placed his head in his paws and took a few deep breaths. He wasn’t faring any better than Morty was at this point. The moment the human hung up, Squanchy would start screaming. He’d probably tear his house apart and break his bones open. 

“Keep your squanch up, kid.”

“You too, Squanchy,” Morty shuddered as he hung up. He let the phone drop—it might’ve even fallen through the cracks between the boards. Clenching his fists, Morty stood and slunk back into the house. Using the strength he’d gained from years of fleeing and fighting, Morty gathered his grandfather into his arms, the same way Rick always carried him, cradling his head, careful not to bump him into walls. Holding him like the universe would end if he dropped him.

Maybe it would.

Weakened by his age and betrayed by his joints, Rick hadn’t been able to carry Morty for a while. Instead of mentioning it, Morty would scoop Rick up in his arms and haul him off to the bedroom. All the while dotting every bit of skin he could reach with kisses. Sure he protested the whole time, warning Morty not to smack his head into the drywall, he always wrapped his arm’s around Morty’s neck. 

Morty placed Rick on the grass and set on his hands and knees to clear out the wood ashes piled in the hearth. Slipping a thin, flame-retardant sheet along the bottom, he made sure he wouldn’t leave any part of Rick behind. 

Before continuing, he wandered into the garage and rifled around, but as he unearthed the gas masks, he remembered he and Rick busted them after a stint in the  _ Anthroppi  _ System. Morty’s had been cracked along the eyeshield while one of the respirators on Rick’s had been torn in half. Rick always said he was going to fix them and Morty believed him. It just stopped being a priority. Especially when they acknowledged their time together was truly, painfully limited. 

One time, Rick got up in the middle of one of their movie nights to grab a drink of water. After six minutes, Morty went off to investigate. He padded into the kitchen, almost expecting to hear the faucet in the bathroom running. Or maybe Rick got side-tracked again by a web of  _ zorflans  _ that had nested into one of their dusty rafters.

Instead, he saw Rick, standing motionlessly in the middle of the kitchen, his face expressionless. Morty placed a hand on Rick’s arm and said his name. 

Rick turned to Morty, slowly, and looked at him for a long second and then asked him: “who are you?” 

There were more times like that. Rick stumbling out the shower, demanding to know where he was. Another time when they were fixing a hole in the fence Rick suddenly turned his head up and murmured about a blood-stained sky. 

Rick always came back, petting Morty’s curls reassuringly, hushing him, and wondering why he was crying.

No longer, though.

Grabbing a torch and a small can of kerosene, Morty shuffled out of the garage. With a bit of maneuvering he placed Rick’s naked, withered frame into the furnace. He emptied the kerosene container all along his frame. Standing slightly back, he lightly ran the torch over the tip of one of Rick’s soaked fingers. Within seconds, he was burning entirely.

Morty shut the iron door to the hearth with his foot and crept back into the house. He had to search for a few minutes, but he finally found it. Returning to the hearth outside, now with a sweater and a pair of lounging pants, if only to avoid the cold, he sat down and with a compact and portable hookah clutched between his fingers. 

The whole thing was made of blue-tinged glass, fastened with silvery, metal accents. He took a drag and sighed as the stale flavor scorched his throat. Holding his breath, when he finally exhaled only the barest amounts of wispy vapor poured from his mouth.

The last time he had used it was when Rick was three days late returning from a trip. Of course, he came back, and eventually, Morty stopped filling his lungs with the shit. Though the flavor was old and rancid, Morty still tasted the underlying tang of licorice.

As he stared at the flames consuming his lover, splitting his bones apart, and eating his flesh, the smell of burning hair and blistering skin did not bother him. Instead, he inhaled the stale remainders of licorice and allowed the clouds to whisk him back to other times. Back to the time when he chain-smoked that same flavor, fresh as the first winter’s snow, from a dingy motel in a rough quadrant of the galaxy, anxiously awaiting Rick’s trip from the store. That time on  _ Sargonik XII  _ when he and Rick were under scrutiny from the resident police force for alleged—though it was very real—drug trafficking. Or that month they spent with image-generators twisting their forms to match the very xenophobic locals’. 

Morty sat there, the flames flickering against his face, until the sun had completed its arc and disappeared over the western horizon. By that time, Rick’s body had fully turned to ash. Morty decided to lay there on the concrete. He drifted off to sleep when the last ember finally snuffed out and left him in darkness.


End file.
